Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Ellis]

Born in Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey,my paternal grandfather was a marine engineering officer who started his apprenticeship with the Cunard Line in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
In 1913 he was given a meritorious promotion from cargo ships to an appointment as a junior watchkeeping engineering officer on the RMS Mauretania.

On his first voyage to New York after berthing at (I think) Wharf 6 at the NY Port Authorities he decided to go sightseeing at the end of his watch.
He walked for a while and found himself in Times Square and no idea how to get back to his ship.

He saw a policeman on duty and asked him for directions. To my grandfather's astonishment the policeman replied in Welsh :

"O lle ydach chwi yn dod fy 'machgen i?" ( Where do you come from my lad?)

The policeman came from a nearby village on Anglesey and had moved to the United States at the turn of the century.
They kept in touch for years afterwards.
_________________
Starting Handle Expert

1964 Jaguar Mark 2 3.4 litre
1962 Land Rover Series 2a 88"
2002 BMW M3 E46 Cabriolet

[Penman]

I do a bit of family history research.
While looking for my paternal line I found that although they were a Burnley and SE lancs area family for most of the C19th they (my Great Grandfathers family had moved to the NE near Durham.
My father eventually left Lancashire in the mid '30s for Bristol, there he met my mother and moved to Guildford in Surrey which was where I was brought up and went to school in the '50s.
About 5yrs ago I was trying to identify a military uniform worn by my Great Uncle (grandfather's brother) in a photograph.
I had learnt from Friends Re-U that a school friend did regular research at Kew so I sent him a copy of the picture, (and the 1881 census to give an approx age/period) to see if he had any contacts who knew their uniforms, when he replied he included this snippet.

"On that census my own Great Grandfather lived next door but one to yours".

That is about 300 mls from where we were in the same class at school.
_________________
Bristols should always come in pairs.

Any 2 from:-
Straight 6
V8 V10

[Rick]

Long-term forum-ers may just remember me putting this story on the main site a few years ago, about something I spotted looking up at me from the floor of a Transit van I was planning to kip in at Beaulieu autojumble, maaany years ago.

http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/strangebuttrue.htm



RJ
_________________
Rick - Admin
Home:https://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk
Videos:https://www.youtube.com/user/oldclassiccarRJ/videos
OCC & classic car merchandise (Austin, Ford ++):
https://www.redbubble.com/people/OldClassicCar/shop

[petelang]

Not long after I purchased a wedding car business, including a Daimler Fifteen from 1934, I was sitting in the customer reception at a seldom visited local garage awaiting wife's car to be MOT'd. A pile of old Classic Car magazines were sitting on a corner table, dating back more than 10 years old, so I began casually browsing the for sale ads, wishfully thinking about all those lost opportunities when, WHOA... That's my Daimler Fifteen, up for sale in Lancashire, complete with pictures!
As no one was about I carefully removed the page to add to the history file.
Later, I delved into the history file that came with the cars and sure enough it had been in Lancs but very little information to follow up. I had acquired it from Rotherham and the owner before that from Sheffield, so the old girl has been about a bit, and now lives in Nottingham.
The advert though gave me a name and phone number and email address.
Remarkable coincidence I thought.
Peter

[emmerson]

As some of you may be aware, I have owned various Royale caravans for over 25 years.
I recently had a phone call from a lady who had just bought one, found my phone number on some obscure site from many years ago, and rang me for info. She remarked that she'd bought the van on ebay, and it had just been delivered to Perth. I said that was along way north of me. No, wrong, it was even further south, as she'd shipped it out to Australia, having bought it from near Carlisle!
Casual chat about Royales in general, and I gave her the number of Christine Lowery, of this forum, as his/her knowledge is greater than mine, and I am no longer involved with the Royale Club. The lady in Oz gave me the build number of her van, which I noted was quite close to my own, not really surprising, as they were both 1979.
It wasn't until we had ended the call that I realised that her new van, was the one I sold to buy my current one, 19 years ago!
She was obviously delighted to have this info, as I was able to tell her much of the van's previous life, as I had owned it for quite a few years.
Ain't it a small world?

[Keith D]

In Australia we have an old car magazine called 'Restored Cars' and a few years ago there was an detailed feature on a 1926 Chrysler.

Somebody in North Queensland ( which is about as far away from me as you can get and still keep your feet dry!) wrote in the next issue pointing out a lot of inaccuracies in the feature. He signed with his name and an email address. As he was obviously very clued up on Chryslers I emailed him and we developed quite a correspondence,

I bought my vintage Chrysler (complete but very, very rough) locally way back and spent many years restoring it, but I knew it had come from Northern Queensland originally. It turned out that this guy had bought my car in 1970, rescuing it from a paddock where the kids had been playing in it. He bought it from the original owner and told me that it had been used as a hire car in the cane fields for many years before being abandoned. The car had then been sold to a concert pianist in Perth and I had bought it from him.

The clincher was when he told me that the car always seemed to run a bit crabwise, making 4 wheel tracks when going straight. So I told him that I had removed the body and found the chassis severely boomereanged. I replaced the chassis with an identical one that I had already restored. Now I only have two wheel tracks when driving straight!

Keith
_________________
1926 Chrysler 60 tourer
1932 Austin Seven RN long wheelbase box sedan
1950 Austin A40 tourer
1999 BMW Z3
Its weird being the same age as old people.
You are either part of the problem or part of the solution

[badhuis]

Probably have told this before but here it goes.
Back in the middle 80ies I rescued a Triumph 2000 Mk1 from the local scrapyard. This was when I rented an apartment together with two other guys, and had no garage or parking space. But I just could not let this very rare (for the Netherlands) car go to scrap. I sold it on to another student who's parents had a big farm somewhere in the north of the Netherlands.
In 2001, my brother was looking for a Mk1 and found one in Den Haag (west of the Netherlands). He got it home and when inspecting it I recognized some peculiar things like a small rip in the headlining. This was the car I rescued 18 years before!
My brother still owns this.
A few years ago I told this story to an old friend who was into classic cars since the early seventies. He said that he also once owned a Mk1 for a few years when it was 15 years old or so, and already at the time was pretty rare in the Netherlands. A great car he said but the car had an engine problem and he could not get the parts, plus he had no space to store the car so reluctantly was taken to the scrapyard.
Yes - the same where I found it a few days later.

My brother working on it - the white car on the right, my green Mk1 on the left.

_________________
a car stops being fun when it becomes an investment

[Ronniej]

I heard a story some time ago that is such a co-incidence it may be an urban myth.
A man who had recently purchased an MG Magnette was given a model of the car by his wife as a birthday present.
He was particularly pleased that the detail was correct down to the registration number.
When he remarked on this to his wife she said she had not given any thought to the reg number when she ordered it.
It turned out that, prior to his ownership, it was his car that had been copied by the company that made the model and they had simply used the reg number as well.